The present invention relates generally to an inventory management and customer support method, and more specifically to a method and system of converting a generic customer service system into a specifically-branded customer service system.
Today's marketplace is generally considered to be dynamic, meaning that it routinely changes and evolves. New companies regularly enter the marketplace, while other companies experience failure and eventually terminate their operations. The changes to the marketplace may be prompted by a variety of factors, including technological advances, changes in economic conditions, or other competitive causes. Given the constantly changing landscape in the marketplace, it is important for most businesses to monitor the marketplace and respond accordingly.
Businesses have long been concerned with finding ways to increase sales, reduce overhead, provide greater customer value to their products and enhance customer loyalty. Balancing those goals in highly competitive marketplaces require foresight, adaptability, innovation, and responsiveness to customer needs.
Maintaining proper inventory requires that a company have sufficient inventory available to meet customer demands, while limiting overstock to avoid unnecessary storage costs. Excess unsold inventory may ultimately need to be discarded, or sold at some substantially reduced price. The problems associated with such excess inventory are particularly significant where products are private labeled for a particular customer. While such private labeling may be useful to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, such private label merchandise can typically only be sold to a single customer, in its original condition. While such products can potentially be modified for resale with a different “skin”, such modifications are typically expensive, time consuming and may leave little profit from sales of the articles.
As such, businesses are continually searching for ways to make products more attractive to their customers, enhance the value of the products to the customers, while at the same time enhancing a supplier's sales and increasing its inventory flexibility. The present invention is directed to a method and system which achieves these and other goals and objectives primarily with respect to automotive tools marketed through various private label retailers. The invention described herein allows a supplier to provide retailers with private label automotive tools that are useful for automotive diagnostic functions, with certain of the functions being implemented via websites which can be customized to incorporate the identity of the retailer, and offer custom functions selected by the retailer, while allowing the tool to be of a more generic construction. Among the functions the website may offer are custom retailing and advertising functions which may be linked to the private label customer's own website, to provide additional value to the private label retailer. Third party advertising and retail sales functions may also be implemented via the private label customizable website, which can provide further revenue and value to the private label customer, with little or no cost or drain upon any resources of the private label customer. As such, the invention allows a private label supplier to offer tools that can be customized to the needs and preferences of retailers with little or no physical modifications that would minimize unique inventory requirements. Further, the system provides a readily customizable website that enhances the value to the customer, enhances additional sales and profits to the retailer and promotes retailer loyalty to the tool supplier. The unique combination of system components and business functions thereby provides advantages to both the supplier and private label retailer, which are described in further detail below.